SAN FRANCISCO has a well-deserved reputation for restaurant fare that is freshly inventive, but with studiously authentic roots. Gastón Acurio, a celebrity chef in Lima, Peru, known for his novo-Andino cuisine, which adds modern sensibilities about freshness, presentation and technique to the culinary traditions of Peru, took note of this when considering where to open his beachhead restaurant in the United States.

“In San Francisco, people love to eat, and are open to new cultures and flavors,” Mr. Acurio said. “It’s the best place for us to start our dream of bringing our food to America.”

Cars are becoming more connected, both to remote systems for navigation and information, and to each other

IN “KNIGHT RIDER”, a 1980s television show, Michael Knight fought for justice with the help of KITT, an artificially intelligent Pontiac Trans Am. The pair chatted amiably, with KITT sensing and reacting to nearby objects, navigating and looking up information about Mr Knight’s immediate surroundings and deadly adversaries. KITT could even drive itself. Thirty years on, many of the fantastical Pontiac’s features are becoming reality. (more…)

“Why should it be absurd to suggest that the potato changed world history?” John Reader asks in “Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent.” If the claim seems odd to those for whom the tuber is little more than a mainstay of comfort foods, Reader argues that its low-key ubiquity is an indication of just how central the potato is to our lives.

Beginning with evidence of 12,500-year-old domesticated potatoes at an archaeological site in Chile, moving to the Inca Empire and on to Renaissance Europe, Reader shows how potatoes (which today are the world’s fourth-largest food crop) have tipped the balance of subsistence.